It has become commonplace for people to utilize a number of communication devices in their daily activities. For example, a person may utilize a laptop computer, a mobile telephone and a tablet computer, sometimes concurrently, in order to perform various tasks. With the proliferation of digital content, the prevalence of applications and the growing importance of these communication devices in people's daily activities, it is anticipated that people will utilize even more communication devices on a more frequent basis in the future.
It would be desirable for the multiple communication devices utilized by a person to be synchronized and to interoperate with one another. In this manner, a person could choose the best or most readily available communication device to perform each task. However, it has proven challenging to maintain communication devices in synchronization with one another so as to facilitate the interoperability of the communication devices without requiring an undesired amount of manual effort. For example, a user may enter a new contact or a new note, such as a grocery shopping list, into one of the communication devices. However, the new contact or the new note is generally not automatically available or visible on the user's other communication devices. Similarly, a user may capture a new photograph with one of the communication devices, but the new photograph may not be automatically available or visible on the user's other communication devices. More generally, data, applications or the like that are stored on one of the user's communication devices are not generally available on the user's other communication devices without manually copying the data or applications from one communication device to another, or without explicit synchronization of the communication devices by the user.
Techniques have been developed for device pairing, such as the pairing of a Bluetooth™ headset with a mobile telephone. However, these techniques generally apply to specific pairs of communication devices and focus on the connectivity and/or networking issues. As such, people who utilize two or more communication devices may find it challenging to commence a task, e.g., an application, utilizing one of the communication devices and then continue work on the same task utilizing another communication device since the communication devices may not be readily synchronized, at least not without explicit synchronization required of the user.